Page 103 of The Death Wish

It was Pitch’s own vile mouth that had told the wrong people of the lake’s true purpose.

Pitch had not expected the desperation that gripped him. After all they had gone through there was to be no resolution?Silas would be left with this world in the stranglehold of the Blight. Pitch had bled, over and over, for absolutely fucking nothing?

‘Surely there is something else you can do?’ he slurred. ‘You’re a fucking Seraph.’

‘Vassago,’ Lucifer’s voice was low with warning.

‘What? Is he powerful enough to destroy the Devil’s fucking halo, or not?’

‘If you’d been more careful, daemon,’ Seraphiel glowered, ‘then your enemies would not have bested you, and the simurgh would not be compromised. I thought you were strong enough for this. Perhaps I was wrong.’

‘Prick.’

‘Enough. Both of you. We have no time for this.’ How strange to have Lucifer the most reasonable in the room. ‘And if you wish to lay blame, Seraphiel, then look to me. I faltered in my resolve at a time most critical.’ Not only reasonable, but self-deprecating. Strange times, indeed. ‘If you cannot draw on the Sanctuary’s magick, is there anywhere else that might serve you? Fae magick from the Child, perhaps?’

Seraphiel’s eyelids fluttered, as though he’d been miles away in thought. ‘No, no Jacquetta must spend all her magick upon the Sanctuary, and besides, it is divine magick I need.’ Seraphiel turned sharply, still pacing, his hair like gossamer flares around him. ‘Gods, I should have kept part of my halo here. Fool, I am.’

‘Did Enoch truly cast it back into the Creation Flame?’ Lucifer wheeled his chair out of Seraphiel’s erratic path. ‘Or was that as half-true as your continued existence?’

The angel eyed him. ‘Don’t be petulant, Luci. I left myself in your hands. Was that not enough to show your importance to me?’

‘You could have told me.’

Seraphiel stopped, freezing with his hands stretched before him, like he was about to start a piano recital. ‘A vestige…it is angel bone…will you give me a piece of your vestige, Luci?’

Lucifer’s silence held the pressure of a storm cloud. He stared down at his hand where it lay in his lap. But still Seraphiel seemed to have utterly forgotten the king’s grievous injury, and looked him with a frown.

‘What’s come over you? Are you sleeping, Luci?’

‘Michael took his vestige, you rotten bastard,’ Pitch snarled at the angel. ‘Are you blind as well as mad?’

He expected Seraphiel to swell with pomposity and indignation. Pitch did not expect the angel to fall to his knees beside Lucifer’s chair.

‘Gods, forgive me. My mind…is…well, you understand. I told you I am not what I had hoped.’ Seraphiel's sudden tameness vanished again, and his mood shifted. ‘You, Dominion. Your vestige? Where is it? I’ve used shavings from it for Cultivations in the past. It may be enough.’ He rose, fussing at a mark on the white satin near his wrist. ‘Do you have it with you?’

Pitch’s utter astonishment gave him the impetus to push to his elbows. The simurgh tucked in its wings, giving him room, its eyes heavy-lidded as it roosted upon his belly still.

‘No, Seraphiel. I do not have my vestige. It was taken from me when I was accused of murdering a Seraph, if you recall.’ With each passing moment, Pitch grew less convinced of going a step further in this fool-hardly quest. Even if the repairs could be made, was the angel in any state to make them?

Lucifer rubbed at his fresh-shaven chin. ‘Enoch did not even deign to return the prince’s vestige to the Flame. He destroyed it, so that it would not taint the fire.’ He inhaled sharply. ‘The ankou. Perhaps he can –’

‘No.’ Pitch and Seraphiel spoke in unison, though with very different motives.

The angel clicked his tongue in irritation. ‘Ankou have no divine magick, and he’d be dangerously susceptible to the Blight.’

‘He is no ordinary ankou,’ Lucifer said. ‘He is the Pale Horseman.’

‘Lucifer, stop.’ Pitch was sharp; his chest tight.

They paid him no heed.

‘He is still death,’ Seraphiel replied.

‘He is Nephilim.’

‘Gods, shut your fucking mouth!’ Pitch cried.

Seraphiel wheeled about, eyes ablaze. ‘He is what?’